GAO finds billions in possible government savings, all without Elon's help

More than $100M in costs could be cut by gutting duplicative IT alone, making DOGE itself look a bit redundant

Comment Cost-trimming in the US federal government is all the rage right now – and a new report finds more than $100 million in savings available to the Feds by doing nothing but eliminating redundant and unnecessary IT investments. 

Those savings are part of a much more significant $100 billion in potential cost reductions recommended by Uncle Sam's Government Accountability Office (GAO), as detailed in the auditors' 15th annual "fragmentation, overlap, and duplication" report, released this week. The annual federal budget is about $7 trillion total, for reference.

The GAO regularly looks over the books and recommends to the Feds specific ways to optimize or save public money; since 2011, 1,460 such recommendations have led to cost savings and revenue increases that total around $725 billion, according to the auditors. The aforementioned $100 billion of estimated savings could be realized if the Feds implemented 589 items proposed by the GAO, 148 of which are new this year.

If agencies could save 10 percent of duplicative IT investments they could save one $100 million or more

The standout item in that list of 148 from a tech perspective is that potential IT savings of $100 million, which the GAO said could be realized by the White House's Office of Management and Budget and 24 federal agencies. Those agencies ought to be conducting annual reviews of their technology estates and "high-risk IT investments," the GAO said. 

In fact, that $100 million figure likely underestimates the total savings, GAO director of strategic issues Jessica Lucas-Judy told The Register.

"If agencies could save 10 percent of duplicative IT investments they could save one hundred million dollars or more," said Lucas-Judy, who was one of the main overseers of the report. "That's a conservative estimate."

In addition to savings from reducing IT overlap at various government agencies, the full GAO report makes a number of additional IT-related recommendations, some of which include additional potential cost savings. Lucas-Judy told us not all of the GAO's recommendations include monetary estimates, as it's difficult to quantify the potential savings from some programs. 

Some of those difficult-to-quantify areas include things like duplicative IT systems set up by the Department of Health and Human Services to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, which are still up and running and burning budget. Fragmentation and potential overlap between various agencies working on quantum computing strategies is another area where money is being wasted, but it's difficult to determine how much could be saved were the Office of the National Cyber Director to take ownership of, and centralize, such efforts. 

In addition, the Department of Homeland Security could save an undetermined amount by modernizing its financial systems, the Census Bureau needs to commit to modernizing its IT, and the Small Business Administration needs to keep to its proposed schedule to modernize certification IT systems, the report says. Software licensing practices, naturally, are also a mess that's hard to put a monetary value on. 

As for specific IT savings, plenty of estimates are available in the report. 

Were the Department of the Interior and Bureau of Land Management to get their acts together to deal with "a failed data system development" for IT systems related to oil and gas royalty collections, the Feds could collect tens of millions more. Were the Defense Department "to incorporate data analytics into its fraud risk management strategy and improve the usability of fraud investigative information to support fraud risk management," the government could save more than $100 million. 

Again, Lucas-Judy told us, those are largely conservative estimates. 

Remind me why we need DOGE again?

If the GAO's findings are anything to go by, there are already competent people in the federal government focused on taking care of one of Elon Musk and DOGE's key mandates as defined by Trump's executive order: "Modernizing federal technology and software to maximize efficiency and productivity."

DOGE, rather than discovering the sorts of things that the GAO appears to have pointed out in its report, has been busy slashing-and-burning its way across the federal government, eliminating crucial cybersecurity teams, slashing regulatory groups responsible for keeping Musk's own companies in check, deploying unvetted AI on government systems, and otherwise opening the federal government up to liabilities that could end up costing it money in legal fights and the like. 

Then there's the surveillance-state-level data grabbing.

Not only that, but the GAO's own boss, US Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, told Congress last month that DOGE's work is making its efforts to audit agencies and keep costs down more difficult, while simultaneously failing to realize anywhere near the $2 trillion or $1 trillion in savings Musk proclaimed he'd find. In a press conference last month, the DOGE kingpin said he only expected to eliminate around $150 billion in unnecessary spending. 

The GAO's latest report, meanwhile, points out a potential $100 billion in additional savings available if the government were to take action on its open recommendations, and again – per Lucas-Judy – that's a conservative estimate. 

If that's the case, one might wonder why the heck do we need DOGE in the first place?

I hope it's true that DOGE is looking at our work

"We're always happy if other groups want to implement our recommendations," Lucas-Judy told us. "I hope it's true that DOGE is looking at our work."

She noted DOGE has access to the GAO's reports, and has already taken action on some of its recommendations at the Treasury Department and elsewhere.

"GAO's mission is an investigative one," Lucas-Judy explained, adding the GAO doesn't have any enforcement power beyond hoping Congress and federal agencies take its recommendations seriously. 

If DOGE can help push through the auditors' efficiency proposals, so be it. Still, if all DOGE is doing is trying to enact GAO recommendations amid attempts to – at times seemingly illegally – oust federal workers Musk and his circle doesn't like or agree with, its cost to the government may be far outweighing its benefit – especially if the GAO is already doing the bulk of its work for it and with greater precision and care. ®